Zillow CEO Champions Work From Home: We See 'Four Times The Number Of Job Applicants'

Amid widespread pushes by companies to return employees to in-person offices, Zillow Group Inc Z remains a steadfast supporter of work-from-home. The online real estate company’s CEO Jeremy Wacksman says its virtual work model is key to the company’s success.

What Happened: Wacksman says Zillow’s “CloudHQ” model has been successful since 2020, according to Inman, a portfolio company of Beringer Holdings along with Benzinga.

“We pivoted the company and committed to [a cloud-headquartered or CloudHQ] model almost five years ago now, and it’s been fantastic for us,’ Wacksman said. “Different strategies work for different companies. For Zillow, the size we are, the type of workforce we are, CloudHQ has been a huge benefit.”

The Northwestern alum says that online work has enabled the company to hire better employees due to the higher number of applications.

“We now see four times the number of job applicants for every job we have versus what we did before the pandemic,” Wacksman said.

Zillow has significantly reduced its office space and lease expenditures. The Seattle, Washington-based company has scaled back its total office space by 73% since adopting its CloudHQ.

Why it Matters: Return-to-office mandates in the aftermath of the COVID-19 are controversial. Proponents of in-person work cite increased productivity, office utilization and company culture as the rationale for in-person work.

However, the changes have been poorly received by many employees. Several companies, such as AT&T, began return-to-office initiatives without sufficient desk space for each employee, according to Business Insider.

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